Menachem Mendel Schneerson: Becoming the Messiah (Jewish Lives)

Description

The life and thought of Menachem Mendel Schneerson, one of the most influential—and controversial—rabbis in modern Judaism
 
The Chabad-Lubavitch movement, one of the world’s best-known Hasidic groups, is driven by the belief that we are on the verge of the messianic age. One man is most recognized for the movement’s success: the seventh and last Lubavitcher rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson (1902–1994), believed by many of his followers to be the Messiah.
 
While hope of redemption has sustained the Jewish people through exile and persecution, it has also upended Jewish society with its apocalyptic and anarchic tendencies. So it is not surprising that Schneerson’s messianic fervor made him one of the most controversial rabbinic leaders of the twentieth century. How did he go from being an ordinary rabbi’s son in the Russian Empire to a mystical sage who revitalized a centuries-old Hasidic movement, constructed an outreach empire of unprecedented scope, and earned the admiration and condemnation of political, communal, and religious leaders in America and abroad?
 
Ezra Glinter’s deeply researched account is the first biography of Schneerson to combine a nonpartisan view of his life, work, and impact with an insider’s understanding of the ideology that drove him and that continues to inspire the Chabad-Lubavitch movement today.